The biggest media merger of all may not be the
one between Time Warner and AOL, or the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles
Times deal. No, the biggest media merger could be the one involving the
news media and the politicians where the proverbial foxes and chickens are
beginning to roost in -- and, in some cases, soil -- the same hen house.

The Time-AOL and LA Times-Chicago Tribune mergers have enormous
financial impact on the news industry. But the sudden chumminess between
the foxes (politicians) and the chickens (journalists) is much more
insidious because it threatens a fundamental value in the news media: its
credibility as an independent chronicler of our government and its
performance in political, economic, security and diplomatic affairs.

It's happened with a minimum of publicity in this celebrity conscious
society of ours, but one of the most unheralded developments in the news
media in the last decade or so involves the considerable crossover between
the journalists and politicians (and sometimes financiers). Consider:

George Stephanopoulos, a long-time Democratic Party functionary, is
reporting on the primary election results for ABC Television News.

Pat Buchanan slips easily from his role as a news commentator into a
presidential candidate and then back again every four years or so.

Mike McCurry, the Clinton press secretary, has been hired by CNN to
analyze the election results, while William Bennett, the former Secretary
of Education, appears all over the media as a commentator on national
events.

Paul Begala, a liberal Democratic functionary, and Oliver North, a
conservative ideologue, are now appearing together on an MSNBC talk show
commentating and in some cases reporting on breaking news as it
transpires.

Jeff Greenfield, Mort Zuckerman, Tony Blankley, Chris Matthews, Dee Dee
Meyers, Bill Press, Lawrence Kudlow, John McLaughlin, even Tim Russert --
the list is growing longer with each passing year. These are all former
political or business functionaries with no practical reporting experience
who are now either frequent commentators, paid news consultants or even
mainstream journalists who are gaining prominence in the news media. (The
news media's use of paid consultants, incidentally, is a practice that
should also be scrutinized, as it is just one more indication that our
news institutions are buying coverage on any given issue).

All this coziness is not restricted to job migration. The chairman of
the Federal Reserve is married to a reporter. The principal State
Department spokesman is also married to a reporter -- one who is very
prominently covering foreign affairs. Indeed the Secretary of Defense is
married to a former talk show host/reporter as well.

What's wrong with all of this? Some will say nothing -- it's healthy to
inject new blood into the news media. Any anyway, it's a free country, and
politicians have every right to jump ship into the news industry. And
certainly prominent leaders and reporters are free to develop their
own personal relationships. So long as they keep their personal
relationships separate from their professional duties, it's none of our
damned business, right?

Political Agendas

All of this is true. But news professionals will understand that the
ever expanding migration by the politicians into the news industry is not
good for journalism because the public has to wonder whether the news
coverage it is getting from newspapers, magazines, television and,
increasingly, the Internet, represents the truth. Politicians have
agendas, and who is to say that a George Stephanopoulos, a William Bennett
or a Paul Begala is not pushing their own agendas when they don their news
fedoras with their jaunty press cards.

Indeed, what happens if CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour is taken
hostage? Should James Rubin, one of the top officials in the U.S. State
Department (and one of Madeline Albright's closest advisers), be in a
position where his spouse is subject to threats by terrorists? And
carrying that proposition to its ridiculous extreme, should we then
provide Christiane Amanpour with Secret Service protection? (This
particular matter will soon become moot, in any event as Rubin plans to
quit soon and move to London to be with his wife to take care of their new
baby).

At this extreme, this is a trivial discussion. But taken from a
longer view, these questions highlight a trend which should be reversed if
the American news media is to retain its all-important credibility as an
independent purveyor of the news.

Until the 1970's, there was long-standing Chinese Wall between the news
media and government service. To be sure, reporters frequently became
press secretaries, but other than that, most serious reporters would not
consider any other substantive role within government or any other special
interest group for that matter. And if they did, it was done so with the
realization that they were ending their professional journalistic careers,
because by making the move to public service, they were effectively barred
from resuming their careers as working journalists. Once breached,
according to the old school, the wall was impenetrable.

Edward R. Murrow, for example, capped his stellar broadcast career as
the director of the Voice of America, but he did so only when he perceived
that his usefulness to CBS had come to an end.

For the most part, these journalists chose to end their careers by
seeing what the view was like at the other side of a camera before
gracefully moving into retirement. Very few returned to the news business
after holding public positions.

Talk Show Masquerades

But the more recent breach in the wall in the opposite direction has
unleashed a flood of politicians and business personalities moving into
the news industry. Yes, many of them are involved in the talk shows, but
the fact is that the talk shows have become an increasingly important
factor as a source of news to the American public. All these politicians
masquerading as journalists has got to have a negative effect on the
public's perception of the American news media in general.

One unfortunate aspect of this tendency is to strengthen the perception
that there is some sort of political/media elite inside the beltway in
Washington, and inside the media institutions located in New York City and
Los Angeles). The media has always been surrounded by this elitist
perception, of course, but the growth of the political/media fraternity in
the last decade has contributed to an expansion of this very unhealthy
perception within the public at large.

Certainly, the polls support this view. The news media, alas, is viewed
by the public at large as one of the least respected professions, right
down there with the politicians and the lawyers.

So what is to be done about this trend towards the integration of
journalistic and political personalities?

We have always taken the position that the news media has to right its
own listing ship. No one else can do it for the industry. If it is to
retain its all-important independence each news institution should be the
master of its own fate. And that means senior management in the news
industry has got to clean up this mess.

One reason the American news industry has retained any semblance of its
independence is that generally its senior management has been drawn from
the editorial ranks so that management is fully aware of the importance of
the institution's credibility. And, when a family ownership situation
exists, each generation has been wise enough to insure that the next
generation earns its editorial stripes before assuming the helm. In this
way, news organizations have been able to insure that key management
positions are filled with men or women who understand that there are
certain values within the news industry which must be observed if
the news industry is to be both credible and independent.

Recently we have had an ugly example of what happens when a news
organization is taken over by non-journalistic managers. The Los Angeles
Times lost a large measure of its historical credibility when CEO Mark
Willes -- who came from the food industry -- instituted policies that
threatened the newspaper's editorial integrity. This became abundantly
clear when a plan surfaced under which the newspaper and an advertiser
shared profits from a supplemental publication of the newspaper. The
Chandler family effectively threw in the towel on Willes' management when
it sold the Times-Mirror group, kit 'n caboodle, to the Tribune Company.

(A confession of sorts: we were fans of Willes' creative marketing
approach. We thought he had some interesting ideas to strengthen the
Times-Mirror's financials. However we did not agree with his idea of
teaming marketing managers with editors, as that was clearly a breach of
the aforementioned Chinese Wall).

The Values Underlying a Free Press

The situation in Los Angeles, to be sure, is not analogous to the
subject at hand -- the foxy politicians roosting in the news industry's
hen house -- but it does demonstrate how important it is that managers
making key strategic decisions fully understand and appreciate the values
underlying a free press. And we would submit that it's time for senior
management across the spectrum of the news industry to take a hard look at
the trend where politicians are crowding out bona fide journalists in the
various news media distribution channels.

The fact of the matter is that politicians don't give a hoot about the
credibility of the news business. In fact, most politicians view the news
media as an adversarial institution whose objectives in search of the
truth are counter to their partisan political goals. So to let the
politicians dip even one toe into the newsroom or broadcast studios as
reporters or commentators is pure folly.

Why? Well the news profession is unique. It is true that anyone -- even
politicians --can decide to become a journalist, but becoming a good
journalist is another issue entirely. It takes years of practical
experience until a reporter develops the feel towards events as they
unfold. A good reporter can smell a phony story a mile away and then
resort to his practiced interrogative skills to ferret out the truth. And
that is the point of journalism, after all: to track down the truth of any
given issue or event so that the reader or viewer can be fully informed of
the truth of any given news story.

Politicians and financiers are driven by a different instinct. Their
agendas are based on their political beliefs -- liberal, conservative,
libertarian, whatever -- and frequently there is little correlation
between the truth underlying an issue or event, and the politician's
interpretation of an issue, according to his political beliefs.

Certainly, the trend towards endless talk shows on cable networks
demonstrates the tendency of the transplants to blow hot air on current
issues. In the news business there is a much-maligned phenomenon called a
"thumb sucker," which is essentially a long-winded article in
which the reporter unleashes his opinion on the subject at hand. These
articles do occasionally serve a useful purpose, as analysis, but seasoned
editors frequently spiked the thumb suckers as a useless exercise iin
vanity. These days, the Cable talk shows are an audio-visual version of
the thumb sucker with the transplants, for the most part, bellowing out
their opinions of the issue at hand. Worse, the volume of these verbal
thumb suckers tends to be on the increase.

(Critics of this column will, rightfully, call this commentary a
"thumb sucker" -- but we maintain that our hot air is serving a
useful purpose in trying to highlight a negative trend).

Reversing the current trend won't be easy. Circulation, ratings and
eyeball numbers may be adversely impacted, and the bottom line may suffer.
But sometimes, good managers have to take reasonable risks if they are to
successfully protect their franchises.

For despite all the demographic studies, the American public isn't
stupid. They recognize good information products and appreciate the value
of truthful, impartial news reports, whether they appear in newspapers,
magazines, over broadcast channels or on the Web.

In these days of a record stock market highs, huge national growth and
general prosperity, it is even more difficult to consciously take the high
road. After all, there's a lot of money to be made in a surging economy,
and there is a general reluctance to rock the boat. However, in general
the American economy is cyclical in nature, and sooner or later the boom
times will end. Then it will be absolutely crucial to deliver top-notch
news to a general public under considerable stress.

We don't think there's a professional journalist in the American news
media that is satisfied with the current state of the industry. Now is the
time to kick the politicians off the bandwagon, and generally clean house.